 Attributing putative noxious qualities to any ethnic group leads to WORSE THAN WAR |
| Review Date: December 21, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Alter Wiener, Hillsboro OR U.S.A. |
Goldhagen narrates the atrocities that had been committed throughout recent history. In South Africa,Turkey,British Occupied Kenya, Indonesia,Burundi,Cambodia,Guatemala,Bosnia,Rwanda,Darfur,Germany and its occupied lands. Mass murder of innocent people has indeed been the scourge of humanity prior to the Holocaust,during and after the Holocaust.
It is shocking and disturbing that so many of the broader populace had been willing to collaborate with the perpetrators, to join rather than contest or protest. Most people became aware when mass murder was carried out by their countrymen on helpless victims who posed no physical or military threat to the perpetrators or to themselves, the bystanders. The apathy of so many within Germany, as well as all over the world, in effect enabled the perpetrators to continue the mass murder during WWII.
According to Goldhagen, (p.149) "during the Holocaust no German perpetrator was ever killed, sent to a concentration camp, imprisoned, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews. Many knew they did not have to kill, because their commanders explicitly told them so. Some men accepted their commander's offer and removed themselves from the task of killing. Nothing happened to them; they were given other duties." Apparently most mobilized Germans chose to take part in the murder of innocent men, woman and children. Their leaders' planted seeds of hatred sprouted in the minds and hearts of those who succumbed to their bestiality lurking inside.
I have often been asked: "Did German civilians know about the ongoing annihilation of the Jewish people?" My response to my life audiences or readers of my autobiography (From A Name to A Number) is in the affirmative: Every German family had somebody or knew somebody serving in the police, military, government etc. Furthermore, there were twenty thousand forced labor and concentration camps in Germany. More than 600 of them were located in Berlin, the capital. In four camps (out of five) that I had been incarcerated, local civilians saw our haggard bodies marching to work, and back. In one camp, I worked at the same factory where German employees worked. In Death Marches, as Goldhagen depicts so eloquently "created the broadest permanent imprint on a human landscape precisely because they cover much territory, with the dying, broken, and unwanted strewn in columns over main roads, past cities and towns, announcing to the countless bystanders unmistakably what their leaders and countrymen do in their name, and leaving indelible images in mind."
I survived the Holocaust with a stabbed soul and traumatic memories. Still, I do not deem the entire German people culpable for the Holocaust. There was one German woman who risked her life, thirty times, for me. She was definitely not the only compassionate German. I witnessed the best of humanity alongside its worst. Regrettably, I saw many devils, but very few angels. Nevertheless, the Bible tells us in Genesis 18.23, "Will you sweep away the righteous and the wicked, the innocent and the guilty?" If there is one righteous person in a village where everybody else is wicked, the entire village must not be destroyed.
WORSE THAN WAR is a very important book! It alerts the reader to realize how prejudice leads to the un-sanctification of life. Xenophobia encourages one people to hate and sometimes eliminate its unwanted people. The Germans under Hitler's fascistic regime became wanton and murderous conquerors. They stigmatized peoples that they deemed to be racially inferiors. They demeaned the Jews, and some other targeted groups, as subhumans of diminished intellectual capabilities. They called their subjects lazybones, cursed, cockroaches, rats, bacilli etc. In the occupied lands, the Germans' collaborators had a history of a long-standing deeply rooted anti-Semitism. The Germans dehumanized (deprived of basic human rights) and demonized (held to be evil) the European Jewry and subjugated it all the elements of Elimination, as defined by Goldhagen: Transformation, Repression, Expulsion, Extermination and the Prevention of Reproduction.
Anti-Semites might find in WORSE THAN WAR support for their contentious assertion "There were many calamities much worse than the Holocaust; it is just Jewish propaganda" They turn a blind eye on the fact that the Nazis were determined to eradicate the entire European Jewry and succeeded to annihilate one third of the Jewish people. Mass murder wherever it occurred is a tragic event in history. No peoples should let it happen: "Never Again"
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Goodness, the book seems incomplete
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| Review Date: December 19, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Tom Peterson, texas |
| Well if you yearn for a holier-than-thou tongue lashing from a real hater of mankind, you have found your book. Mankind is wretched, the author assures us, in loving gruesome detail. Why it's a wonder we took time off from committing genocide long enough to log onto Amazon for a few minutes. Of course, violence has been declining over the last few thousand years and especially over the last few centuries by every objective measure, but the implications of that are never discussed, one suspects because it detracts from the orgy of misanthropy and especially the agenda of those who profit from this kind of material. A careful reading of this book as well as the author's last book "Hitler's Willing Executioners" gives you some idea where the author is coming from. Gosh, if only mankind had some small group of energetic people to help guide us to a more moral form of existence ... why such a people could even wrap themselves in the cloak of moral superiority and use that as a guise to gain immense power and privilege. But I digress. If you relish the thought of sitting through forced sensitivity training classes and enforced multiculturalism (itself a form of cultural genocide?) then you have found your ice cream. The US is evil, Islam is evil, Europeans are evil, Asians are evil ... I could go on. One odd note, there doesn't seem to be much about Israel and it's controversial actions with it's neighbors ... hmmmm ... oversight? Too many other ethnic conflicts to cover I suppose. Modern day Israel and it's ancient version get only passing attention. Well unless they were victims of course. We learn that it is Jews that are the most frequent victims of expulsion for example - not sure how the Palestinians would feel about that. Well, I'm sure that will be the next book. The book is deeply manipulative, full of hatred for almost all of mankind (perhaps a small sliver excluded?) and intended to create guilt that can be cashed in on. |
A comprehensive effort to understand ' Genocide'
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| Review Date: December 14, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Shalom Freedman, Jerusalem,Israel |
One cannot read this book without being astounded and dismayed by how widespread and common is human cruelty and evil. Yet the emphasis of the author is precisely against generalizing the Evil away, and finding fault with anyone and everyone. The emphasis of the author is on placing responsibility on those who commit the deeds of Evil. It is too in showing how individual decision have been again and again crucial to the whole process of initiating and carrying out Genocide.
Goldhagen writes about five mechanisms of what he calls 'Eliminationism' the effort of one people or state to rid itself of the 'other' it finds undesirable. One mechanism is through Transformation of the 'other' into something else.'Transformation is the destruction of a group's essential and defining political, social , or cultural identities in order to neuter its members alleged noxious qualities. 'Repression entails keeping the hated , deprecated or feared people within territorial reach and reducing , with violent domination their ability to inflict real or imagined harm upon others.' A third is Expulsion removing unwanted people from one's territory. A fourth is Prevention of Reproduction. A fifth, is Extermination. 'Radical as it is,killing often logically follows beliefs deeming others to be a great, even mortal threat. It promises not a piecemeal, not only a probable but a 'Final Solution' to the problem. The most notorious 'final solution' giving his infamous euphemism worldwide currency , was the Germans mass- murder of the Jews.'
Goldhagen gives an account of a wide variety of efforts of Elimination of one people by another. He dispels the myth that is only Modern Technology which made large- scale Genocide possible. He shows how critical a role individual leaders have in the whole genocide process. He shows too how involvement and responsibility is not ordinarily the work of a select few but of great parts of the society. He provides chilling examples of human cruelty, relating to the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, the Tutsi- Hutu conflict in Rwanda,Burundi the Khmer Rouge murders of their own people in Cambodia, the Chinese murders in Tibet, the Japanese actions before and during the Second War throughout Southeast Asia, the Kim Sung Park murders of his own people in North Korea, the Indonesian murders in East Timor,and of the Communists in the country, the Pakistani murders of Bengalis, Saddam Hussein's murders in Iraq, the Sudanese Islamist murders in Darfur.
Goldhagen searches to destroy myths which enable individuals and communities to escape their own responsibility for mass- murder. He provides a detailed look at the problem which raises again painful and difficult questions about the true moral character of humanity, and its capacity for and tendency to do great evil. He shows how the perpetrators were not as some have contended 'coerced' to do their evil work. Those who did this work ordinarily did it with great enthusiasm, and sadistic cruelty. It was not enough for them to murder, in most cases they had to humiliate and torture also.
Goldhagen dispels other 'myths' which would somehow make excuses for the perpetrators or make their deeds necessary and inevitable. He shows how it is human decision over and over again which is involved in these deeds of evil.
Some of the examples he brings are so horrifying they led this reader to wince and turn away.
In the concluding section of the book Goldhagen talks about what can be done to prevent future Genocides. He surveys the major countries and political groupings of the world and concludes that the greatest danger facing Mankind today is from what he calls, 'Political Islam'. He points out that what others call Radical Islam, or Islamic Fundamentalism openly calls for 'elimination' of its enemies. It demonizes any opposition to it, and gives religious sanction to murder and elimination of others. Goldhagen writes that the Eliminationist program of Political Islam is one which aims at total destruction of the West. He talks about what Islamists proudly proclaim is their great strength, their preference for Death over Life.
Goldhagen goes on to prescribe a number of measures which need be taken by governments if future Genocide is to be averted. One of these is the formation of a world- body based on Democracies which will provide an alternative to the United Nations which has been totally ineffective in acting against Genocide.
This book is a must read for those who would understand our world, the disasters it has known, the dangers it is facing. |
Essential, but irksome
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| Review Date: November 30, 2009 |
| Reviewer: R. Schwenk, Rockville, MD USA |
| This book is essential reading for anyone interested in a comparative study of twentieth-century genocides. Goldhagen includes some mass murders of which I previously knew nothing such as the Germans' treatment of the Herero in South-West Africa and the British suppression of the Kikuyu in Kenya. All future analyses of genocide's causes and characteristics will have to reference this book. (Note: it is not necessary to have read Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust prior to reading this book.) Now for the bad news: 1) The book is mind-numbingly repetitious at times. Goldhagen must make the point over and over that the perpetrators are willing and eager participants in the slaughters. 2) He invents terms (eliminationism for genocide; Political Islam for Islamo-fascism; genocide bomber for suicide bomber) that do not add much clarity to his arguments. 3) His utter contempt for the work of Milgram and Zimbardo reeks of unprofessional axe-grinding. 4) He condemns Harry Truman as a mass murderer (for the atomic bombs) but includes not a word about the Vietnam War. 5) The chapter on Political Islam assumes a unity among Sunni, Shia, Wahabbi, etc. that exists only in the minds of neo-cons. 6) The chapter on What We Can Do proposes actions that are either utterly unrealistic or utterly horrifying. See The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil for another angle on explaining perpetrators' behavior. See For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence for an exploration of the connection between child-rearing and cruelty. |
GOLDHAGEN OMITS CRITICISM OF ISRAELI GENOCIDE
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| Review Date: November 26, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Obi-Wan Kenobi, San Francisco, California |
| This book discredits itself as it omits discussion of the Israeli warcrimes against the Palestinians. Indeed, this problem is inherent to Zionists, they justify their own warcrimes and genocide against Arabs by citing German actions against Jews, as though two wrongs make a right... |
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